Chainsaw Man
a review by JusakuRedai
a review by JusakuRedai
_will discuss full, unmarked spoilers up through Ch. 111/episode 6 of Chainsaw Man, and marked spoilers for other shounen_
Chainsaw Man is about a lot of things and I only came to writing this review, or something resembling it, after going through the Public Safety Arc for the fourth time* (*not fully, because from Ch. 18-39 I’m waiting to see after each corresponding episode from 7-12 of the anime.) I’ve been thinking about these panels. Long after the third read did certain scenes - Himeno on the balcony, the way Aki’s face is expressed by himself, all of Makima - these remained upon me and I can do nothing but think about them as I might my memories of kindergarten. I think it’s rather fitting that I came to Fujimoto’s rowdy 1997, the year of my birth, again during my first COVID-19 isolation, a week or so of solitude and a brass tempo of depressed, unmotivated anime, manga, and film soak in which I realized that only Chainsaw Man really means much to me anymore - that and my own dream.
In the past few years I’ve become very good at selecting, rereading or rewatching, knowing my favorites when it comes to media. I have almost fifty YouTube playlists catered to different feelings or moods, sporadically recreate Top 5 lists and 3x3 grids, and recently rewatched a bunch of my all-time favorite movies. Most of these I know why they’re my favorites through a bit of self-psychoanalysis, and yet Chainsaw Man (hereby abbreviated as “CSM”) is the only manga I’ve read three or four times and I still don’t understand why I like it so much. Until now.
On two layers. First, structurally and as a manga. When we know that Tatsuki Fujimoto is a yearning film director but studies himself to this particular form. His broadband, nearly roughshod drawings when it comes to the characters as depicted in panels (more often in the simpler, living moments) - in contrast with the background, and the detail and clarity with which characters can be drawn when they’re needed, for e.g. Chainsaw Man himself (in full devil form), Makima on the beach (pain), and all of Aki (suffering). I can talk about Aki. But not now. Most manga you’ll read, especially that of “quality” (by whatever notions you use), has its own distinct visual style, usually very good, if not amazing. But for the work of literature it is, CSM is often just low-key. It almost feels as if sometimes Fujimoto just draws the bare minimum. If you’ve read Look Back, it feels like that. But in CSM’s case, that’s better. Because Fujimoto then allows us to see these characters in their rawest, most barebone depth. One of the best examples from Part 1 (because he isn’t in Part 2) is when he visits Denji on the sickbed, and uses beautifully cut apples as one of a great many instances of Pavlovian dream conditioning. There is this triptych of panels where Aki just acknowledges Denji, gets up, and is about to leave. Sequences like these - it’s harder to really recognize during the battles, which by nature act the same way - are the full expression and meaning of the superfluity if not freeness of Fujimoto’s manga direction. While it’s in character for Aki, being who he is, to so deliberately leave the room, it’s not necessarily efficient. If we compare to Jujutsu Kaisen or Blue Lock, for example, where panel space is used as sparingly as the David being carved from the stone, here Fujimoto draws and cuts as if it’s a first draft. While the entirety of his previous long-running work, Fire Punch, was the true first draft for CSM bearing some of the same core ideas but running rampant with them in a less hinged, more “kino” manner, CSM itself still reads like one and arguably the School arc still does, but at the same time with a keener, or one less held back by Shounen Jump, vision. Part 1 has its own antagonist and the function of the Gun Devil as a means of control for Aki, as it was already conquered but divided, shows a long-term purpose for the work from early on. But a lot of decisions on the smallest level show more the spirit of an auteur, than the precision of one who’s completely mastered their craft (e.g., from Bong Joon-ho’s Barking Dogs Never Bite to Parasite). But again, in this way it only strengthens CSM and makes it so fun to read. Like Parasite, CSM is one of an extraordinarily few works in any form that are of quality/arthouse/"literature"/what have you - but also so digestible; and like Parasite, it bares its themes in as many ways as it can. Rather than talk about them specifically, before getting to the second layer - what CSM means for me - I will hone in on what CSM means for the genre.
Battle shounen, or the battlefield of dreams. Blue Lock epitomizes this, as all of the cast is made up of strikers, bent on becoming Japan or the world's #1 with the herald of “ego” and enough edgy energy individually to merit each being protagonists even though only one of them is. Denji announces “dream battle” when fighting the Leech Devil, pitting his unfeathered one of touching breasts to her and Bat Devil’s of eating all the humans in the world - one very possible, one very not. By now we all understand the standard shounen protagonist’s dream of becoming something, perhaps a king of some kind, or attaining. Before it, Hunter x Hunter was the dream battle prototype, for which Gon’s dream of finding his dad really meant
I still want to talk about the panels though. Very often in shounen or in manga in general you’ll get these full-pagers of characters sobbing or otherwise having some revelation. Fujimoto doesn’t need that. It might be harder to focus on when binging the manga, but I think that his minimalism delivers. It allows us to see as much of the characters as possible with simultaneously the least detail needed, so that even with a wide range of emotions, all are shown. Some examples are Angel’s utter shock, despair, and deja-vu when seeing Aki so readily bend to Makima, just as he did before; Makima’s look of complete boredom after thinking she defeats Denji, or her laughter while lying on his lap; the one time Aki shows positive emotion in the present, when coming home to Denji and Power before eating (and barfing) to their concoction for him; and Kobeni (including the way she stands or slumps). MAPPA has taken extra care to animate facial expressions as vividly as anime movies or studio feel. might, last with Episode 6’s Kobeni terrors. With some characters like Quanxi or Kishibe, they have much the same expression almost all the time, which in light of the others, means more to their weariness; or Yoshida, who’s just enigmatic. Power is perhaps the most enigmatic, as for so much time she's her Power - Blood Devil self who relishes in Kobeni's despair and plans on winning the Nobel Prize. In Part 2, Fujimoto concentrates most of this onto Asa, who among the full cast of all CSM is particularly emotive, she’s somebody with a rather outside perspective even after becoming the host for War. Thus in Part 2 Fujimoto has completely transcended the battle shounen fabric by transcribing an element of war onto a high schooler, the typical shounen energies onto the slice of life that the latter entails. Even with the rest of the horsemen on the horizon (the older sister, and if Kobeni’s contracted with Hunger/Famine), with Denji now a deuteragonist?, even with the possible Chainsaw Man impostor and the organization telling Yoshida to keep Denji in check, Part 2 distinctly lacks the drive of your common shounen, that is the protagonist’s dream, because as of yet Asa is dreamless; thereby giving Fujimoto full and free run to direct as he please.
And now, I’ll look back to Aki Hayakawa. Upon initial meeting he gives off Sasuke Clone Trooper vibes - standoffish, black hair, competent, has some sort of revenge goal, and doesn’t vibe well with the main character. We know that the Gun Devil killed his entire family, and he goes out as the Gun Devil fiend killed by his family. His inability to smile, his difficulty with making real friends, and how he can’t look away from his insatiable goal of killing the Gun Devil - until he’s reminded, when he comes close to losing his family again to the Darkness Devil. Then he asks to withdraw from the mission, but of course he’s roped in by Makima. He was roped in from the beginning. In the aforementioned beach episode Angel asks him why he started liking Makima, and he can’t answer. When was it? It’s hinted at that, unlike Denji, Aki was bent into Makima’s control by her actual Control Devil powers from the start, in addition to the control he’s put on himself towards killing the Gun Devil. That’s all he can think about, even when he’s shown his limited future. Even when he’s contracted with the Future Devil, he’s only looking at the past, at the root cause of his motivation, and his contract with the Curse Devil works in the same way by cutting off his lifespan each time he uses his sword - in dire need, when it’s the only thing he can do for killing the Gun Devil. Both he and the reader are told early on that his time is limited, and the only time he makes his own decision free of his two controls is to withdraw, for Denji and Power - but the manifestation of Control puts him right back. He all so willingly offers all of himself to her on the beach. As a tragic character, he is fated for despair from the beginning; if Sasuke was destined to be
I could now talk about the second layer, how the fight for dreams does reckon something for me, with my own ambition, life-painting, but only that - painting - not actually giving it color, only something to live because of, rather than for. Denji wins in the dream battle - he’s fighting for his, as much as they change, far more arduously than I am. Perhaps I now see something admirable in the pup’s chainsaw revs, as so often my dream becomes more a “hope” than something I’m legitimately striving towards. But I’ll leave it at that.
I think I’m stuck on the paneling - and almost started to reread Fire Punch, just for more - because of the hidden power that I believe elevates manga above all others. Because it’s harder to remember motion than stillness. When I think back to memories from childhood, the further I go back, the more stilted, movement-less they become; less of scenes, and more of frames, with only a single character’s movements - as if it were just one panel, given animation - recalled. I think this is the best corollary I can make to remembering the frames of Chainsaw Man, as ones actually relived, and reread in far more recent memory. While those panels that are animated may truly fade into memory, and with my tendency to save screenshots and panels into my Chainsaw Man folder, I still look back to my favorite moments over and over. With this many reads in the past four years, when I think of for example Denji and Reze sitting at the cafe, Denji and Power holding onto each other as something more and less than siblings, Makima sitting at her desk - I think of them as characters I have truly met. It’s a bit harder to focus in when characters do battle, but I imagine it as if it’s Hollywood and it’s truly a spectacle.
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